Original model sheet from production 1091: "Fast and Furry-ous" of 1949. The first Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner appearance directed by Chuck Jones.
Original model sheet from production 1091: "Fast and Furry-ous" of 1949. The first Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner appearance directed by Chuck Jones.
"It's an Alphabeautiful Mathemagical New Musical Movie!" That is the tag line used in advertising "The Phantom Tollbooth" a 1970 feature length film directed and produced by Chuck Jones. (It was his only feature length film.) A combination of live action (Chuck makes a cameo appearance in the beginning live action sequence) and animation, "The Phantom Tollbooth" is about a young boy, Milo, who is bored with his life when suddenly a magic tollbooth appears in his room & propels him into a marvelous quest to save the Princesses Rhyme and Reason. This is the second adaptation of a book by Norton Juster that Chuck Jones made into a film, the first being his Academy Award-winning "The Dot and The Line" of 1966.
The artwork (mixed media on board, approx. 4" x 8") pictured is a pre-production concept work by Phyllis Graham, the wife of the revered teacher and artist, Don Graham, from whom Chuck Jones took many a life-drawing class in the 1940s and 1950s. It has been selected by the curator of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences gallery to be a part of an upcoming exhibition of the art of Chuck Jones opening May 14, 2010 in their Beverly Hills facility.
"Tunnel Vision" a hand-painted cel art edition of 250 by Chuck Jones.
“I see nothing in the Coyote that I can’t find in almost any
human being. Most of us share his desire
for something small and special, be it diamonds, doughnuts, or Road
Runner. Wile E. Coyote devotes enormous
ingenuity and energy to chasing the Road Runner. People wonder what good it would do him to
catch the Road Runner, as there’s obviously very little food on that scrawny
frame. A rabbit would seem to be more
nutritious prey, but Wile E. considers roadrunner to be a luxury item on the
coyote’s food chain. There are
delicacies as yet unknown to the human palate, and one of them is this
apparently succulent avian." --Chuck Jones
"Soundstage" a 16 field (13.5" x 33") pan cel art edition of 750
Chuck Jones on Pepé le Pew: "If you can't do it yourself, animate somebody who can--Pepé le Pew, for example. Pepé's sexual confidence is absolute. he sees rejection as no more than a temporary setback, and every pursuit as an interesting variation on the road to inevitable success. (For myself, as an eighteen-year-old I took every expression from every girl as a rejection. If I couldn't find a rejection I liked, I would invent one.)
"Pepé is the individual I always wanted to be, so sure of his appeal to women that it never occurs to him that his attentions might be unwelcome, or even offensive. I tried to make Pepé's confidence a part of my own personality, hoping to share in his sexual success. On the screen it worked."
"I shoulda taken a left turn at Albuquerque," laments Bugs Bunny as he finds his bearings on the way to the Carrot Festival in the Coachella Valley. Perhaps one of the most iconic sentences ever written for the screen, this line sets up the action to come for the Chuck Jones directed 1953 crowd-pleaser "Bully for Bugs." Chuck Jones remarked that they wouldn't have made a film about bull-fighting if Eddie Selzer, the producer, hadn't stuck his head into Chuck's office during a meeting and said, "No cartoons about bull-fighting." If Selzer thought a bull-fighting cartoon wouldn't be funny, they had no choice but to make one. ("Left at Albuquerque" hand-painted cel art edition of 250, available at your Chuck Jones Gallery, click through on the image for more details.)
With Award Season behind us for another year, Daffy's going to have to put his hopes on hold once again ("...a duck can dream, can't he?") But there's no reason why you should. "Daffy's Impossible Dream" is a hand-painted cel art edition created from Chuck Jones original line drawing. Click here to learn more.
In 1989, Chuck Jones' autobiography Chuck Amuck was released with much fanfare and critical acclaim. In a series of appearances at art galleries around the nation that launched the release, Jones was overwhelmed with the outpouring of love and admiration from his legion of collectors, fans and admirers.
One aspect of book publishing is the all important cover art, and in the case of Chuck Amuck there was no doubt who would be providing said art. Chuck Jones created this image of Bugs Bunny seated at an animator's desk, quickly animating Daffy Duck with the sign "Rabbit Season"; it is, in essence, a flurry of drawings as they fly off his drawing surface.
Released at the same time as his autobiography, Bugs Director: Chuck Amuck is a 16 field (13.5" x 16.5") hand-painted cel art edition. The line for the edition was created by Mr. Jones in graphite and then beautifully inked (with a brush) by him, it was then transferred to acetate sheets, painted and Mr. Jones then hand-signed each example in the edition. It is the perfect centerpiece to any collection of Chuck Jones art. Learn more about it here.
"The Kid" hand-painted cel art edition by Chuck Jones
"I was raised in Hollywood when the great comedians were at the top of their power, and I soon realized that--just like our temporarily demented cat Othello--what they looked like had nothing to do with what they were. It was how they moved that made them what they were...
"From 1918 to 1920, the Jones clan lived in an orange grove directly across the street from Hollywood High School on Sunset Boulevard. if I thought about the matter at all, I would not have considered myslf privileged.
"And, as far as I knew, any other boy in the self-same world could, by walking two blocks to Charlie Chaplin's studio at La Brea Avenue and looking through an open-link fence, watch Chaplin at work, which, I am sorry to say, I often found deadly dull. I loved his films; so easy, so natural, so appealing to my sense of rebelliousness and anarchy, they were a complete contrast to the endless repetition of the filming itself, which I found almost unbearably tiresome.
"One evening I lost faith in both my father and Chaplin when my father came home to tell us that he had seen Chaplin shoot a single fifteen-second scene 132 times. He was trying to perfect the little choppy run he used when he was being chased around a corner. To simulate running on ice, he put down an oilcloth and oiled it, but his feet kept going out from under him--131 times! Either my father was lying (a possibility I could not ignore) or Chaplin didn't know what he was doing (another possibility, which observation had taught me I could not ignore either.)
"Why," I asked myself, "not do it right in the first place? Can't he learn how to do it by watching his own movies?" Everything was always right the first time in the movies!" -- Chuck Jones writing in Chuck Reducks, Drawing from the Fun Side of Life